Harry Baird wrote: ↑Mon Nov 28, 2022 3:39 pm
Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Mon Nov 28, 2022 2:32 pm
I was drawn to your assertion: "South Africa,
which was itself an exploitative colonial project". From a conventional historical perspective this statement cannot be right. Actually, it requires a specific and a relatively recent perspective in order to confect that statement. It requires an established and a somewhat developed political perspective to *see it in that way*. It requires, then, a type of historical revisionism. You (I mean one) have to have been educated in the view in order to have adopted it. Therefore, to counter this view, I will have to bring forward and become cognizant of another,
countermanding view. Largely, that is the view that I have
personally. But having the critical position that I do have of post-Apartheid South Africa I will have had to *turn against* entire sets of ideas and assertions which are modernist and progressive. Again, my assertion here is that these are "metaphysical". They exist and operate at a level that could be described, though perhaps a bit fancifully, as subconscious or perhaps *non-rational* is the word I seek. So it requires an emoted reasoning, a sentimental reasoning, to *see things* as we have all been trained to see things. And the more careful and the more 'truthful" reasoning is then seen as 'fascistic (which is an interchangeable term with
evil or even
demonic).
I'm not interested in being gaslighted by you via your historical revisionism whilst you shamelessly accuse
me of historical revisionism. Sadly, one need not wonder too hard at what the motivating views of yours are to which you only vaguely allude. Are you brave enough to come out and express them explicitly?
I am going to go back to this juncture -- where you got a bit belligerent (which I do not really mind that much) -- and start over.
You start from the assertion, an absolutely sure one, that you can judge and have a right to judge negatively the founding of what is now South Africa. The attitudes that you have are attitudes formed in later modernity. It is a 'revisionist' perspective insofar as a modern idea or an attitude is projected backward hundreds of years into the past, and moral judgments are made against actions of the past. That is 'revisionism'.
The ideas that have been formed in our present are beyond doubt influenced by Marxist analysis and are part-and-parcel of anti-Colonialist political movements that have engaged in guerrilla-style war to topple those regimes that were identified as colonialist and racist. Are you aware of this? And would I need to cite references that you could study? The case in point is South Africa. I understand this position because, as I said, I devoted not days or weeks or months to studying those who write from this perspective, but frankly years. (My area of interest was the Americas and not Africa but the similarities link them). It would be impossible to say that I am unaware of the Left-Progressive (and also Marxist-revolutionary) perspective of those groups that engaged in civil war, and guerrilla war, to push matters to the negotiated settlement of the early 1990s. So in this sense I can fairly say *I have done my homework*.
Since I myself do not start from a revisionist position when I review South Africa's founding, I am not compelled, or impelled, to make all the judgments that you do about those Europeans who came and settled the area. I note that you do. I do not judge your position, necessarily, since judgment becomes too final. I say that it can be examined, interrogated, questioned, and in this sense dismantled. Should you do this? I am not sure it would serve your purposes if those purposes involve having and holding to an absolute position from which to judge, again from a modernist's perspective, world history and as I often say *the way things are here*. So what I notice is that the position that you do have has built into it a unique advantage: you can reexamine any historical event and 'assign blame' to those who did not act the way you assert they should have acted. This could be 2,000 years ago, or 800, or 50. I have called this position 'The Cat Bird's Seat'.
This is why I said "From a
conventional historical perspective this statement cannot be right." Your historical perspective, which is revisionist, was certainly not entertained in the early days of the establishment of the South African outpost (middle 1600s). Within non-European Africa itself there were, as there always are, expansions, invasions and occupations of lands held by different tribes. These go on everywhere in the world. Africa, Asia, South America, North America, everywhere. These have gone on since the beginning of human time. Literally, it is *the way the world is*.
Now is it possible to de-blame native Africans when they expand, conquer and dominate, and to say something like "Well, that is internecine struggle" or the (natural) struggles between similar groups (similar because they are Negro I assume) while seeing the European (Dutch and English) invaders as somehow uniquely wrong or especially wrong? Yes.
How would one do that? And really
why would one do that? The *how* involves taking and internalizing specific perspectives, no? These have to be fashioned and organized into a coherent framing, right? But where did they come from? And an additional question is What purpose do they serve? That is, who concocted them and why?
To answer these questions must involve back-tracking into historical intellectual processes. I feel that I can say with certainty that *the Marxist perspective* as an ideological wave can be examined fruitfully as one of the major sources of our modern perspective. You seemed confused when you retorted that your father, a capitalist, must therefore not have absorbed aspects of the ideology and as if his capitalism negates what I refer to. Not so. Marxian analysis has deeply penetrated into highly capitalist societies. (And this is another topic).
Take one example: Marx himself wrote extensively about the American situation, the slave-economy, and he was read by many within the American intellectual community of that time. The roots of Marxian influence go deep. I am not saying this is 'bad' or 'evil' and I am not even saying that it is 'pernicious'. I am saying that it existed, it went on. The perspectives that we have today, I say,
have roots, and the better we see and understand them, the better we can understand 'what has informed us'. Why we think like we do and why we internalize certain perspectives and then see them as 'natural' or as 'normal', so that other idea-set seem 'wrong' and also bad/evil depending on our moods.
I went on to say:
Therefore, to counter this view [a range of views informed by modern perspectives and ideology], I will have to bring forward and become cognizant of another, countermanding view. Largely, that is the view that I have personally. But having the critical position that I do have of post-Apartheid South Africa I will have had to *turn against* entire sets of ideas and assertions which are modernist and progressive. Again, my assertion here is that these are "metaphysical". They exist and operate at a level that could be described, though perhaps a bit fancifully, as subconscious or perhaps *non-rational* is the word I seek. So it requires an emoted reasoning, a sentimental reasoning, to *see things* as we have all been trained to see things. And the more careful and the more 'truthful" reasoning is then seen as 'fascistic (which is an interchangeable term with evil or even demonic).
Now can I ask you if you see and understand better what I am attempting to bring out? Do you still see this as 'abstract'? Do you see getting clear about *orientation* as useful or non-useful?
Or (and this does happen and is common) will you set your feet, as you surely can, and refuse, absolutely, to entertain any ideas, any views, which could potentially undermine the core perspective that you hold to?
Are you brave enough to come out and express them explicitly?
I believe so. It takes something like *bravery* or at least a commitment and dedication to examine the view-structure from which it seems to me that you operate. Why? Because this view-structure is so powerful today. Those who hold to it, who wield it as I often say, use it as a bludgeoning tool. They develop certain historical views in the present and, with an intensity of conviction bolstered by self-righteousness, march forward to become activists of these perspectives. The entire movement (this is my opinion) involves a form of extremism (taking one idea and putting all the emphasis on it in a somewhat fanatical manner) but on the extremes of this extremism are those who we have loosely been describing as 'the Woke'. And they cobble together activist narratives which, for example, take positions against the Founders of the US (one example) and, through this ideological opposition, against the very idea that the country has a right to exist. They take their activism forward, in sheer certainty that they are *right*, and tear down monuments and historical figures they see as *bad* and *evil* and they do this believing they are *doing good*.
Shall I go on? Do I need to? What seems plain as day, to me, might not be seen so plainly and clearly by you.
So what we are doing here is setting up the necessary preambles to be able to talk about those other perspectives (you say that I only) allude to. But the background and the preamble has to be established when people have such different core positions.
Now, and I direct this both to you and to Seeds (another others who may care to undertake deeper analysis) I present here a speech by
Jonathan Bowden that explains the 'countermanding' views that I alluded to. You are aware of the shorter excerpt from this speech because I shared it with you numerous times). But I very much like what he says, and I agree with a great deal of it, and I also understand it as originating in sets of ideas that are
countermanding and
countervailing.